Improving Team Communication

This article discusses the importance of effective team communication and its impact on productivity and efficiency. It explores the causes of ineffective communication and provides strategies to improve internal communication within a team. The author shares their personal experience as a team leader and how implementing these strategies helped them complete a project within the deadline.

Preparing for success

Table of Contents
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Reflection.....................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

Main Body
According to Stonehouse, 2019 the Driscoll's model of reflection was
created by Borton in 1970 and updated by Driscoll from 1994 to 2007. The
model stipulates that in order to properly conduct self reflection, one must
ask three main questions- what, so what and now what, in relation to the
task on which reflection is performed.
After completing my computer science engineering from a prestigious
college, I was hired as a software developer at an IT company, where I was
tasked with leading a team of junior software developers and data analysts
to create an android application for our clients within the prescribed
deadline. After having created a Software Requirement Specification(SRS) for
the smartphone application that was to be developed, I delegated the
necessary and relevant tasks to be accomplished to my team members on
the basis of their technical skills and prior experience gained and started
recording and evaluating their performance, effectiveness and efficiency.
Within a few days of working, I identified that the team's overall productivity
was below par and that there were some major lapses in the coordination
and teamwork amongst my team members most of which were being caused
due to ineffective internal communication amongst the team members.
According to my estimations had things continued the same way, we would
not have been able to complete the desired application within the prescribed
deadline restrictions imposed by the clients.
In order to improve the team's performance and productivity, I had to
identify the causes of ineffective communication amongst my team
members. According to Gervits, Eberhard and Scheutz, 2016 the most
prevalent cause of ineffective communication amongst team members is the
difference in spoken languages and culture amongst the members and I
identified the same to be the primary cause of ineffective communication
amongst my team members. Half of my team members spoke English as
their first language and were fluent, but the other half spoke English as a
second language which hampered their ability to effectively articulate their

ideas and suggestions to others, resulting in decreased team productivity
and efficiency. In order to complete the project within the prescribed
deadline I had to find ways to improve our internal communication within the
team. To do this I mandated daily team discussions to make the team
members amicable towards, improve their internal communication and
create a sense of togetherness and friendship amongst them. To improve the
individual communication skills of team members who weren't fluent with
English, I subdivided the team into groups of two, where one member was
fluent in English and could help their struggling partner in order to raise the
team productivity and efficiency (Yang, 2019). At this point I identified that
though the overall team productivity and efficiency had improved, there
were still a few select groups whose performance was being hindered by lack
of effective communication. To improve this, I organised dedicated internal
conferences where these group members were asked to focus on their
English listening and speaking skills and learn from their group partners who
could articulate and speak effectively.
By implementing these approaches, I was able to record a drastic
improvement in my team's productivity and efficiency which was achieved
through improving their internal communication practices. As the team
members were individually skilled and talented, I only had to work on
improving their internal communication and through the various discussions,
conferences and the internal group dynamics that I implemented. Though
the process took some time, results achieved were recognisable and tangible
in the form to increased team performance, productivity and efficiency. It
also had the added benefit of making the team members gel together and
become friends which also improved their coordination and teamwork.
Through this process the all team members were able to improve their
communication skills and the individuals struggling with English language
found their group partners to be really helpful and informative in improving
their own communication skills. Through these approaches the team was
also able to achieve its objective of creating a smartphone application for the

client during the prescribed deadline, though we didn't have enough time on
our hands to perform additional error tests and debugs in order to meet our
professional expectations.
Reflection
Through my role as the team leader guiding a team to create a
smartphone application for our clients, I ended up learning a lot about the
significance of effective communication amongst team members and the
effects ineffective communication has on overall team performance,
productivity and efficiency. This realisation has even made me work to
improve my own communication skills in order to effectively speak, articulate
and convey my ideas and suggestions to others in order to become more
productive. In order to improve my public speaking capabilities I too ended
up joining a dedicated conference club where I try and speak my thoughts to
a given public.
The approach implemented by myself effectively improved the internal
communication amongst my team members and was a significant reason we
were able to complete our smartphone application within the prescribed
deadline provided by the clients. Through our work to improve the team's
effective communication, many of the previously shy and introverted
members of the team were able to come out of their shells and make friends
and establish amicable relationships amongst their professional peers, which
also has the added advantage of improving team member's motivation and
reducing their stress.
Though the methods which I implemented were proven to be
successful in improving the team's productivity and efficiency and were
instrumental in us completing our project within the deadline, I now realise
that I could have assessed the reasons for low team performance earlier
than I was able to and implement the solutions in a faster way. This would
have left us enough time to iron out few errors and bugs within the code and
enabled us to polish the application to our professional standards.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Stonehouse, D., 2019. Reflection and you. British Journal of Healthcare
Assistants. 13(4). pp.182-184.
Gervits, F., Eberhard, K. and Scheutz, M., 2016. Team communication as a
collaborative process. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 3. p.62.
Yang, H., 2019. A critical reflection on improving effective team
communication. Frontiers of Nursing. 6(1). pp.13-18.